1. Technical Field
The invention relates to the network management technology. More particularly, the invention relates to an enterprise console for management of large-scale the networks of computational devices.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Information technology (IT) administrators in enterprises everywhere face a daunting task of managing the software and hardware on tens, hundreds, or thousands of machines in their domains. With so many incompatibilities, patches, and policy advisories announced daily, the task is much more than just acquisition and installation. Even simply keeping aware of all potentially problematic situations on hardware and software products used in an enterprise requires more than a full-time job. Dealing with those situations in response to user complaints adds still further taxing demands. Thus, it is required that IT managers must anticipate the situations which may soon arise in a specific enterprise and make plans to deal with those before they cause major problems. This creates an urgent need of a technique which enables the IT managers to understand the configuration of the hardware and software in a given intranet, to keep track of the policy advisories, updates, incompatibilities and patches relevant to the specific enterprise, and to match those policy advisories, updates, and patches with the specific equipment in the enterprise.
Donoho et al disclose in U.S. Pat. No. 6,256,664 a technique which enables a collection of computers and associated communications infrastructure to offer a new communications process. This process allows information providers to broadcast information to a population of information consumers. The information may be targeted to those consumers who have a precisely formulated need for the information. This targeting may be based on information which is inaccessible to other communications protocols because, for example, under other protocols the targeting requires each potential recipient to reveal sensitive information, or under other protocols the targeting requires each potential recipient to reveal information obtainable after extensive calculations using data available only upon intimate knowledge of the consumer computer, its contents, and local environment.
This process enables efficient solutions to a variety of problems in modern life, including the automated technical support of modern computers. In the technical support application, the disclosed invention allows a provider to reach precisely those specific computers in a large consumer population which exhibit a specific combination of hardware, software, system settings, data, and local environment, and to offer the users of those computers appropriate remedies to correct problems known to affect computers in such situations.
FIG. 1 is a schematic block diagram illustrating a communications system for computed relevant messaging according to the prior art. A user directs an advice reader running on his computer 101 to subscribe to three advice provider sites 103-105. The corresponding advice is brought into his computer in the form of digital documents, where the advice reader inspects the advisories for relevance. These digital documents are called advisories. The transfer from Internet 102 to computer is entirely one-way. No information about the user's machine goes back to the advice provider. An advice typically comprises three parts: (1) a relevance clause written in relevance language which is evaluated by the advice reader to determine the relevance of the advice; (2) a message body for providing explanatory material explaining to an advice consumer as to what condition is relevant, why the advice consumer is concerned, and what action is recommended; and (3) an action button for providing the advice consumer with the ability to invoke an automatic execution of a recommended action.
Whereas in the consumer setting it is acceptable for the computer user to be in control of the process, learning which problems exist and applying the fixes, in the enterprise setting it is often the case that end user administration of computers is frowned upon. Instead, computers are often managed centrally, and a system administrator is in charge of keeping configurations workable and avoiding enterprise-wide problems.
What is desired is a technique that provides centralized advice management in a large-scale the network of computers.
What is further desired is that such technique provides a management interface that can display relevant advisories of all computers in the network and deploy suggested actions to all relevant computers.
What is still further desired is that such management interface allows a system administrator to manage subscription of advice provider sites, monitor status of deployed actions and monitor status of computers in the network.
What is still further desired is that such technique can automatically apply the required management tasks to fix problems on susceptible machines before they occur.
Commonly assigned PCT application no. PCT/US02/36644, which application is incorporated herein in its entirety by this reference thereto, discloses a system and method for centralized advice management of large-scale the networks, wherein a number of distributed clients run on registered computers, gathering advisories and report relevance to a central server. A system administrator may view the relevant messages through a management interface and deploy suggested actions to distributed clients where the actions are executed to apply the solutions of the advisories.
In a preferred embodiment, a centralized advice management system includes a plurality of distributed clients, a central server, a central database, and a management interface. The distributed clients gather advisories from a plurality of advice provider sites and report relevance of advisories to the central server. A system administrator may view the details of relevant advisories and deploy the suggested actions to distributed clients of relevant computers, where the actions are executed to apply solutions provided by the advisories.
In another equally preferred embodiment, a centralized advice management system includes a plurality of distributed clients, a mirror server, a central server, a central database, and a management interface.
In another equally preferred embodiment, a centralized advice management system having a distributed client is provided, in which the distributed client comprises various components performing functions such as gathering advisories, authenticating advisories, evaluating relevance of advisories, registering a computer to a central server, reporting relevance to the central server, listening messages from the central server, gathering deployed actions from the central server, and executing deployed actions.
In another equally preferred embodiment, a method for providing centralized advice management for large-scale computer the networks is disclosed that comprises the steps of:                The distributed clients on the computers register to a central server;        A system administrator subscribes registered computers to advice provider sites;        The distributed clients gather advisories from subscribed advice provider sites;        The distributed clients report relevance to the central server;        The system administrator views relevant advisories using a management interface;        The system administrator deploys actions suggested by the advisories to the distributed clients; and        The distributed clients execute the deployed actions to apply the solutions of the advisories.        
The method may further comprise a step to manage subscription of advice provider sites to the distributed clients. It may further comprise a step to monitor the status of deployed actions. Alternatively, it may further comprise a step to monitor the status of registered computers.
It would be advantageous to provide an enterprise console by which such system is used to identify vulnerable computers on the network, and that then allows authorized personnel to correct problems across any subset of the network with a few simple mouse-clicks.